St. John’s Lineups: A Little Bit Of Everything Leads to Nothing

St. John’s captured a 14-point victory over Dartmouth at Carnesecca Arena on Saturday, but the Red Storm are still 10-8 and winless during Big East play. The entire season has been characterized by new starting lineups and trying to fit together mismatched pieces.

Prior to the season the Red Storm were considered potentially the “most-talented team in the Big East.” While that article links to Jeff Borzello’s CBS article from November, he certainly wasn’t the only one saying it. Five starters returned from the previous season and St. John’s seemed to have the pieces to be a competitive team in the new Big East. Things haven’t worked out quite that way. Now 0-5 in conference play, Steve Lavin is facing questions about how to get the most out of his lineups.

The problem is that St. John’s can’t seem to find a lineup that works with its 10 rotation players on the court. Sure, there have been new starting lineups galore (almost half the games this season have featured a new five), but it doesn’t really matter. It’s about finding a group that can give a coach consistent minutes. That’s not happening. This season Ken Pomeroy is tracking the most used lineups during a team’s past five games. Here’s the percentage of time that the top lineup has played together for each of the 10 Big East teams:

Team

Lineup Pct.

Providence

34.5%

Xavier

32.2%

Butler

26.5%

Villanova

21.1%

Seton Hall

19.4%

Creighton

19.1%

Georgetown

14.9%

DePaul

14.4%

Marquette

13.1%

St. John’s

8.7%

Well, you probably saw that coming, huh? But isn’t it somewhat shocking that St. John’s has found that little consistency? It isn’t just the past five games either. In order to better understand what was wrong with the Red Storm I took a look at the performance of lineups and individual players against “Big East level competition,” defined as teams ranked 125th or better in Pomeroy’s rankings.

By algorithmically going through play-by-play logs I found the most played St. John’s lineups during those games and their performance are presented below.

PG

SG

SF

PF

C

Off. Points

Off. Poss.

Def. Points

Def. Poss.

Off. Eff.

Def. Eff.

Margin

Rysheed Jordan

D’Angelo Harrison

Phil Greene

JaKarr Sampson

Orlando Sanchez

81

65

73

62

124.6

117.7

6.9

Rysheed Jordan

D’Angelo Harrison

Sir’Dominic Pointer

JaKarr Sampson

Orlando Sanchez

46

43

48

46

107.0

104.3

2.6

Rysheed Jordan

D’Angelo Harrison

Phil Greene

JaKarr Sampson

Chris Obekpa

37

34

49

38

108.8

128.9

-20.1

Phil Greene

D’Angelo Harrison

Max Hooper

JaKarr Sampson

Chris Obekpa

31

32

30

30

96.9

100.0

-3.1

Phil Greene

D’Angelo Harrison

Sir’Dominic Pointer

JaKarr Sampson

Chris Obekpa

38

29

23

30

131.0

76.7

54.4

Phil Greene

D’Angelo Harrison

Sir’Dominic Pointer

JaKarr Sampson

Orlando Sanchez

28

24

22

25

116.7

88.0

28.7

Phil Greene

D’Angelo Harrison

Orlando Sanchez

JaKarr Sampson

Chris Obekpa

17

20

25

22

85.0

113.6

-28.6

Rysheed Jordan

D’Angelo Harrison

Sir’Dominic Pointer

Orlando Sanchez

Chris Obekpa

25

18

24

19

138.9

126.3

12.6

Rysheed Jordan

D’Angelo Harrison

Sir’Dominic Pointer

JaKarr Sampson

Chris Obekpa

19

17

20

16

111.8

125.0

-13.2

Rysheed Jordan

D’Angelo Harrison

Phil Greene

Orlando Sanchez

Chris Obekpa

15

17

11

17

88.2

64.7

23.5

Before we go any further there’s one huge caveat to all of this: Because St. John’s subs so much and has so many inconsistencies in its lineups, even the most-played lineup has only played 127 total possessions (offense and defense) together this season. That’s just less than a full game. Therefore this isn’t a particularly large sample. The extremes though could still be relevant. For instance, there are a number of lineups with Sir’Dominic Pointer that have been successful. The defensive numbers of the fifth and sixth most used lineups seem too good to be true, but Pointer is nationally ranked in both block percentage (5.7%) and steal percentage (3.9%). Those lineups also provide plenty of rebounding, with the 6’5″ Pointer playing small forward. Why is rebounding important? Well, the Red Storm are excellent at making shots difficult for opponents. The problem on defense, especially against more talented opponents, is corralling the misses. St. John’s currently ranks last in the Big East in defensive rebounding percentage. Getting a third, bigger player to crash the boards instead of forcing Phil Greene or Max Hooper into that position on the boards should translate into slightly better defensive numbers.

It’s also worth noting that the most-played lineup, which is a little smaller, struggles a bit defensively, but is the third best of these 10 lineups offensively. That helps those five at least stay in front of opponents. It makes sense that lineups with Sanchez would be better offensively. Right now he has a much more refined offensive game than Obekpa. That’s probably why St. John’s is almost 10 points better per 100 possessions when he’s on the court versus off of it against those same “Big East quality opponents.” Unlike Hooper, who gives almost all the offensive gains back by struggling on the defensive end, Sanchez is passable on both. Here’s how St. John’s (the entire team) has performed with certain players in and out of the lineup against the upper echelon of opponents:

Last

First

Off. Eff. In

Off. Eff. Out

Def. Eff. In

Def. Eff. Out

In Poss.

Out Poss.

Off Diff.

Def. Diff.

Total Diff.

Greene

Phil

103.5

100.0

102.8

118.2

543

218

3.5

-15.4

18.9

Sanchez

Orlando

107.0

97.2

105.8

108.6

401

361

9.8

-2.8

12.6

Obekpa

Chris

100.3

104.9

100.0

114.5

394

367

-4.7

-14.5

9.9

Hooper

Max

111.1

96.4

112.0

103.8

314

447

14.7

8.2

6.5

Harrison

D’Angelo

102.6

102.3

106.1

109.6

540

221

0.3

-3.5

3.8

Pointer

Sir’Dominic

100.2

105.9

106.0

108.7

456

305

-5.7

-2.7

-3.0

Achiuwa

God’Sgift

96.4

104.6

104.1

108.2

197

564

-8.2

-4.1

-4.1

Branch

Jamal

108.1

99.2

116.0

102.1

271

491

8.9

13.9

-5.0

Sampson

Jakarr

101.7

103.6

111.1

101.8

424

337

-1.9

9.2

-11.2

Jordan

Rysheed

98.7

106.2

111.3

102.2

389

373

-7.5

9.1

-16.5

Is anyone else shocked by Phil Greene’s numbers? I was a little until I thought about it. The reason Greene’s numbers look so good is the improvement he brings over Rysheed Jordan, who is obviously still finding his way against elite competition. Since the game against Xavier on Dec. 31, Jordan hasn’t posted an offensive rating above 100 in a single game, with his best being 98 in 33 minutes against DePaul. He played just 13 minutes against Providence and 23 minutes against Dartmouth, neither with particularly good results. Has Jordan hit a wall? Is that what’s happened to St. John’s offense? It’s quite possible.

The other surprise in this list might be JaKarr Sampson. The 6’9″ forward has had just one game in Big East play with an offensive rating above 100, the double-overtime loss to Providence last Thursday. If Sampson can improve his shot selection and concentrate on getting to the rim it’s quite possible that the St. John’s offense could improve and the Red Storm could become more competitive in the Big East.

What all of these numbers reveal is that there’s no magic bullet that can either fix or destroy St. John’s season. The Red Storm have a number of talented players, but are working through the growing pains of a freshman point guard and a coaching staff that has struggled to find a consistent rhythm of substitutions during games. Don’t worry that the Red Storm keep starting different lineups. Worry that Lavin and company can’t find a way to get the most out their unique pieces during the 40 minutes that come afterwards.

Note: All lineup data was processed from the official play-by-play available on NCAA.org. I was unfortunately unable to obtain XML data, but was able to smooth out any lineup errors during the QA work through this data, which is part of the reason this post is about a week later than I had hoped. Curious about another team’s lineups? Ask in the comments.

KenPom is putting some lineup data at the bottom of his team pages now. I had to write a computer program to grab all the lineup data that I reference in this post because it’s impossible to get anywhere online.